the hate obama party. let's play "hardball." ♪ ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. this hatred of the president has sunk deeper and deeper into the republican blood stream. to be a member of the gop in november 2013 is to be a member of the h.o.p., the hate obama party. you must not only oppose him, the plit cat -- political

leader. but everything with his name on it. you must not only hate the president's health care plan, you must support any work of sabotage. the goal is to blow up the program. whether by denying people information, refusing to have your state participate, talking the young people into how to avoid accountability. this is what the enemies have been doing since they first learned of his election just as the southern states began moving towards secession. in the victory of abraham lincoln, this is the way they wanted to sabotage his -- well, tonight the hate obama party and all its anger and misery. david corn and ron reagan, both are msnbc contributors. gentlemen, thank you for joining us. this sabotage campaign that was laid out today in today's politico puts together all of the republican party's four-year war to sabotage the affordable care act. he writes from the moment the bill was introduced, both houses of congress announced their intention to kill it.

the gop faithful then up up their crusade past the president's re-election. in a pattern of massive resistance not seen since the southern state's defiance of the brown versus board of education in 1954. let's look at just a few instances of the gop's attack to derail the health care law at all costs. republicans withhold all support when the law first makes its way through both chambers of the congress in 2009. in 2010, scott brown of massachusetts wins the special election up there after running a campaign to kill the legislation. his victory gives the gop 41 votes in the senate which gives them the power to block any fixes or improvements in the new law. once implementation begins, republican governors across the country refuse to build their own state exchanges putting unexpected pressure on the federal exchanges. then congressional republicans refuse to give hhs the money it needs to build the federal exchange. then there's the obstruction campaigns.

they include gop darling like rush limbaugh and dick marsh urging people to avoid tax refunds as a ways to avoid or sign petitions rejecting their exchanges. then there's the gop icing on the cake. a two-week government shutdown and the threat to blow up the economy. if the health care isn't dismantled. strong stuff. ron reagan, i want to start with you. this has been a concerted effort. it's like when you read about lincoln coming to washington through baltimore and into town because the secession movement has begun. they didn't give this guy a honeymoon. they didn't give him nothing. they started going after him from the beginning. >> no. and they haven't learned their lesson. they just got their hat handed to them with their government shutdown and the debt ceiling, and you'd think they'd be chasing it a bit, but they're going to keep this up. it's an ideological war they're fighting where these tea party members, they think the government is bad. not only do they think that obama's government is bad, any government is bad.

so they want government to fail. which is a pretty outrageous thing. imagine when the iraq war was getting underway if democrat who opposed the war, weren't crazy about george w. bush to begin with began denying troops body armor or denying them armored vehicles or things like that. that's the equivalent to what republicans are doing to the health care bill with not expanding medicaid, leaving millions of people to suffer without health insurance. just because of their ideology. >> i don't want to defend all of it, but when they start talking about how the president oversold the ease of which it will come in, weren't they the guys who called the iraq war a cakewalk? just to remind people. what real oversales is about. >> one of the most important points i think todd makes in his excellent piece in politico is that the way this town used to work is that when a bill was passed, a big bill, a big program, you knew it would need tweaking along the way.

you know, there were unintended consequences. sometimes you see what happens with regulations and tax code stuff. you have to go back in and make what are called technical fixes. back in the days of tip and gipper, maybe if you lost the fight you bring up a bill and say this is neutral to make this work better. you could get it past both sides. say we want the program to work. that can't happen now. so therefore obama and the executive -- >> explain why. because you can't get the votes to do anything in the senate. >> the republicans would use that is as a way to obstruct. therefore, the executive branch now and the white house, they have to do a lot of this with regulations they otherwise wouldn't do. and it's like throwing gum into the works -- >> all these fixes they demand now, they had an opportunity to deliver on right after they got the first part of the health

care plan through. then they came around reconciliation. they said we're not giving you a single vote. you've got to do it that way. flfr, you can't change the policy. anyway, republicans continue their efforts to undercut the president's authority by blocking two of its nominees for the supreme court. or the appellate court yesterday. the first was mel watt, the congressman, to head the federal housing finance agency. watt became the first blocked for executive appointment since 1843. the second was patricia millett to the d.c. court of appeals. i mention that republicans, they're holding it up on the charge that the president is packing the court. in reality, he's simply filling vacancies. in other words, doing his job. here's john cornyn using this tortured logic on a radio show earlier this week. >> i think we're going to be successful in stopping this court packing experiment and the country will be better for it. i think they ought to let their senators know that courts should not be partisan play things for

any administration and ask president obama and the democratic majority leader to stop their court-packing effort. >> ron, john cornyn is an example of the tail wagging the dog. normal circumstances he would be a normal conservative. not a bad guy. normal person trying to do his job in washington leading his party to as many victories as they can get. all well and good. yet he begins to act more like that character sitting with him down there from texas. he begins to imitate like they all do. they all start talking like mike lee and rand paul because they're scared to death one of these will look over and see them and won't have averted their glance. they're afraid of getting any attention, these people. reasonable right winger conservatives, any kind of conservative unless they're out and out tea party types. it's gotten to be the craziest leading everybody else. because fear of being tagged you're not one of us. >> you're right. guys like cornyn get led around

by the nose by the worst elements in their party. david had mentioned tip and the gipper before. i got home from a trip overseas to find that book by a young up and coming political named matthews. it reminded me that in the old days, you know, as david was mentioning, you got things done even if you disagreed. tip o'neill and my father were about as different as any two people could be. ideologically, personally, all of that. yet they understood that america can't stand still. the elections have consequences and the winners get to kind of enact their program and so, you know, you fight and all that sort of stuff, but things have to get done. >> thank you, ron reagan. you're looking good. coming up hillary or joe. the new book says the obama

campaign seriously considered dumping joe biden for the ticket and putting on hillary. well, plus the republican war on the poor. no surprise here. food stamps cut, medicaid don't expand. the philosophy seems to be, if you're poor, it's because you're lazy, so don't look to us for help. who did? don't blame both parties for the political process. if someone demands your house, car or dog, there's no compromise. it's the gop going off the rails. objective journalists began stop taking dictation and start reporting. finel, you've got the questions, i've got the answers. you goat play "hardball" with me. i'll answer your questions on twitter. this is "hardball," the place for politics. has an active naturals oat formula that creates a moisture reserve so skin can replenish itself. aveeno® naturally beautiful results. i can't believe your mom has a mom cave! today i have new campbell's

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back to "hardball." here's the biggest bombshell yet. another sequel to game change after president obama's

popularity took a hit. his top aides considered a radical move. replacing joe biden with hillary clinton on the 2012 ticket. the new book is called "double down." according to reports, it's not out until tuesday, the authors mark hall person and john -- reveal the group included bill daly. then chief of staff. they used focus groups and polls to see what difference it would make. in the end they decided it wouldn't change things dramatically for the ticket and dropped the idea. on cbs this morning, bill daly himself conceded he did consider it, but there was never a serious discussion, as he says. >> it was looked at. but it was never seriously looked at in the sense that there was a belief that it ought to be done or needed to be done. and the truth is any research that was done confirmed the fact that that was not an issue that the voters cared about or thought that should be done. in 2011 as you remember, nora, it was a very difficult political year.

so my sense was we ought to look at everything here. because this is a -- it was a very difficult period politically. >> here's jay carney responding to the report in the book coming out tuesday. >> it's important to know that campaigns and pollsters as part of campaigns test a lot of things. what i can tell you without a doubt is that the president never considered that and had anyone brought that idea to him, he would have laughed it out of the room. joe biden has been an asset to this president in two campaigns and throughout five years of this administration. >> well, chris cillizza is an msnbc contributor. and michael scherer for "time" magazine. chris, i want you to first get in on this. there's one way to play it down. i guess that's what bill daly was doing. not denying it.

the key is he accepted the fact of this book that there was a set of focus groups taken, there was money spent to try to decide whether to dump the vice president who was close to bill daly personally and close to the president. they were that worried that they conducted all this research to dump him. and then they decided after getting the research, not deciding ahead of time we love this guy. but after the research saying it's not worth it. the plugs pluses and the minuses don't add up. and take a lot of heat. that's what we know now as a fact. >> here's what i'll say first, chris. mark halperin and john heilemann have written this book in which they've written a lot of explosive stuff and not any of it has been denied. give them credit as reporters. >> daly didn't deny it. >> no. absolutely. he said it was true. so why did they do it and decide not to. i do actually buy some element of the daly argument which is, look, president obama wasn't in a great place. we were trying to figure out

what best way to give him a chance to get re-elected. we wanted to think about this. i think on its face, i don't think you even needed to conduct polling but they did. on its face i think we always talk about this. maybe they should trade out this. george w. bush he thought about getting rid of cheney. it doesn't -- i think it reeks too much of panic and desperation. so that minus almost certainly cancels out any pluses you might get. >> let me go to michael. knowing all that, we know how it makes you look weak and desperate and very selfish to dump a very loyal running mate. it really hurt, i think, gerald ford when he dumped rockefeller. back in '76. it makes you look like a guy losing altitude in a plane and throwing chairs out the door. you don't look good like that. why would they think of doing it knowing the price of doing it? >> i think they're running a campaign that was going to test everything and be run by numbers. >> you're saying it's the puff.

>> almost all presidents running for a second term, this comes out. came out with quail and cheney. >> how about bush in his diary i should have dumped quayle but i can't admit it. >> the scandal is that it's leaking now for someone like biden who already has a tense relationship between his staff and the west wing staff. >> what's that about? what is the friction? >> i think it has to do with them thinking they're serving different masters. that creates tensions. all the reporting i've seen and done has always said the relationship between obama and biden personally between the men is good. and surprisingly good for both men. but with the staff, it hasn't worked. >> the idea of picking biden like picking cheney is you picked a guy that wasn't going to run. i don't think they thought he could go for another eight years as president. the most difficult job in the world.

i guess that changes somewhere. i get the sense biden would like to be president and he's actively doing things like tagging up in pennsylvania a lot. being seen with the president on any stage of significant. positive ways to be v.p. but they show ambition politically. >> no question. i think if hillary clinton doesn't run, joe biden does run right now. one quick thing on your point and michael's point on the tension among the staff. this is not new for joe biden. he's had a political team around him since 1987. that's when he first started thinking about running for president. so he brought all that with him. one point i would say about the substituting or the thought of substituting, as you know, chris, biden was picked in 2008 because he was the kind of steady hand on the tiller. he knew washington. there were concerns that barack obama might not be ready, biden was aimed at quieting them.

fast forward four years. what barack obama needed in 2008, isn't what he needed in 2012. i think that's inevitably true with presidents. i think it's why you always see the phenomenon of they think about the possibility of changing the v.p. and decide not to. >> i think it looks bad to dump a guy. the times report that the game change authors obtained a memo from governor chris christie's vetting process to be vice president. quote, according to a memo on christie from the vetting team, it had unanswered questions from early in his political career on a securities and exchange commission settlement involving mr. christie's brother. on names and documentation of his household help, and on his medical sister. the dossier was littered with potential land mines. we haven't seen the book yet, but this raises a question. meanwhile mitt romney had another issue with the governor. that would be chris christie's weight. romney marvelled at christie's girth, his difficulties in

making his way down the narrow aisle of the campaign bus. watching a video of christie without his suit jacket on romney cackled to his aides, guys, look at that. that sounds pretty high school. chris christie, if i were him and i liked the guy, i would be ticked of something putting off questions about the vetting not getting answers. >> it was clear during the campaign and after that the convention that the relationship between christie's staff and christie in particular in the campaign were rough. and i think there were raw feelings. >> because he stood with the president on sandy? >> even before that. that happened afterwards, but even before that coming out of the convention we had stories of christie being problematic behind the stage, being upset after the convention speech. >> he'd be a terrible vice presidential nominee. there's nothing about that man that says vice president. it's like barbara streisand once said. i'm either going to be really successful or nothing. not halfway successful.

>> with romney who couldn't connecte he was a guy that could connect to the republican base. >> yeah. but do you think he's good at taking orders, this guy? >> yeah, not so good. tomorrow morning time.com is going to publish an excerpt of the book about chris christie. should look for it there. >> that's good. don't buy the book. just go to time.com. >> you have to buy the book. get that chapter. >> thank you. you have a nice cackle too. >> i do my best. nora o'donnell has the best. up next, your turn to play "hardball" with me. i'm going to answer your twitter questions. this is "hardball," the place for politics. [ female announcer ] did you know the average person smiles more than 50 times a day? so brighten your smile a healthy way with listerine® whitening plus restoring rinse. it's the only rinse that makes your teeth two shades whiter and two times stronger. ♪ listerine® whitening... power to your mouth. to tostore and essentially they just get sold something. we provide the exact individualization that your body needs.

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welcome back to "hardball." tonight it's my chance to play "hardball" with you and answer some of your questions from twitter and facebook. the first question tonight comes from donna marie. she asks how do we get reasonable, sensible republicans to step forward and flex their

muscles to shut down the loud r fringe? i think it's democrats that have to do that. find reasonable deals good for the country. find moderate deals. even progressive deals that some republicans will go along with to show you can produce legislation and create positive government. that's one thing you can bet that the hard right will never get involved with. onto our next question from carl. he asks how do you see the political divide playing out over the next ten years and what can an interested citizen do to make a difference? if you're for hillary clinton, work for her. she has a good chance of becoming our next president. on the right side i think there'll be a big test in this country. somewhere between now and 2016, you'll see a civil war on the republican side reach its climax. a battle between somebody like rand paul or ted cruz on the right and maybe chris christie on the center right. and that's going to battle out for who's the next future of the republican party. however, if the right wins the nomination and gets blown away by hillary clinton in the fall,

good-bye. anyway, our next question comes from christopher. he asks has your job gotten any easier to do over the years? do you find it as challenging as ever? >> actually it's gotten easier because the politics have gotten easy to follow. the democratic party is the party it's always been. it hasn't changed much from the days of kennedy and humphrey and adlai stevenson. it's a center left party leaning to the center in a lot of parts of the country. some people on the hard left, not many. then you get the republican which has moved almost entirely in terms of leadership to the hard right. people line boehner, they're following the hard right. people line john cornyn of texas is following leadership of ted cruz. you've got a hard right party against a center left party. even centrist left party. it's not easy to fight and understand the issues. thanks for your questions. really good ones. on monday, by the way, 1:00 p.m. eastern i'll be hosting our first live q & a on the new msnbc.com. i'll answer your questions about my book that's out there right now.

tip abdomen the gipper, when politics worked and also everything to do with "hardball." just go to hardball.msnbc.com. you'll see the live q & a post. click join the discussion and start leaving your answers in the let's play hardball group thread. see you there monday at 1:00 p.m. eastern. that's "hardball" for now. up next, "your business" with jj ramberg oat formula that creates a moisture reserve so skin can replenish itself. aveeno®

for those nights when it's more than a bad dream, be ready. for the times you need to double-check the temperature on the thermometer, be ready. for high fever, nothing works faster or lasts longer. be ready with children's motrin.